It’s safe to say that Ferrari surprised us all at the Singapore Grand Prix. Most of us had them as the third best car on the weekend but that turned out to be Red Bull. The team who was tipped to take the fight to Mercedes.

But was this just a flash in the pan for Ferrari? The Singapore Grand Prix tends to throw up some rather unconventional races and that may have contributed to Ferrari’s success. Who knows, but the upcoming Russian Grand Prix will be important for Ferrari as more eyes will be on them and they will be expected to carry on their good run of form. The Russian Grand Prix will act as validation to determine if their performance in Singapore was a once off or if they’ve turned a corner with the SF90 and it’s finally coming good.

This week we move to Sochi for the Russian Grand Prix. A race that Mercedes has dominated since it made an appearance on the F1 Calendar in 2014. A Mercedes outfit on the back-foot tends to be a very dangerous thing for their rivals. Mercedes have demonstrated over the years that they’re a highly focused team and come back into form in very dominant fashion. Both their drivers were hard done by their strategy in the Singapore Grand Prix race and will both be looking to etch their names in the books for this years Russian Grand Prix.

Ferrari are coming off the back of three victories in a row and will definitely looking to continue on this run to make it four in a row. It seems like they’ve finally solved their front down-force issues and both drivers seem much more comfortable in the car. The race in Russia this weekend will be the test that will determine the rest of the season for Ferrari.

Another race weekend also means another battle for the mid-field spoils. The layout of the Sochi Autodrom should play towards Renault who are currently sitting in 5th place on the Constructors table with 67 points and who are chasing down Mclaren in fourth with 89 points. Renault will be relentless in this pursuit for fourth place and so will Mclaren. It will be slightly worse for Renault if they were to be beaten by a customer team.

Russia could’ve been a good race for Red Bull, but Honda have elected to replace the ICE of all the Red Bull teams. This means that Max Verstappen, Alex Albon, and Pierre Gasly will drop 5-places down the grid while home favourite Daniil Kvyat will start from the back of the grid. This clearly shows that Honda are gearing their teams for the Japanese Grand Prix in front of their home crowd.

We’ve been #blessed with some great racing of late with the past few races. The Russian Grand Prix, however, tends to be one of the unexciting venues on the F1 calendar. Degradation is nearly zero which means teams go for the one stop race and the racing is usually dull, or at least what we see on TV. The mid field battles are great to keep an eye on and with low degradation we could see the over-cut become quite powerful. Holding thumbs that it’s a good one.